Let's start with the basics.
Here is what I said:
"Wealthy people tend to be intelligent and hard-working."
Do you disagree with this part?
Isn't it true that successful people, in general, work hard and make wise decisions, and that often leads to wealth?
Intelligence is really hard to measure. And if someone grows up in conditions more conducive to fulfilling the potential of an education, that doesn't give us a level playing field on which to makes these conclusions. If you took the same child and compared how they did in a poor school versus a rich school, would you argue that they'd end up in the same/similar place in terms of success/wealth as an adult? Because I don't.
It feels like saying that rich people tend to be better at playing polo than poor people. Is there a polo gene that rich people pass down or is it that poor kids don't get the opportunity to try polo?
"They pass both those traits down to their children through DNA and through parenting."
Surely you don't dispute that intelligence is partially inherited, and that work ethic is often instilled through parenting?
I agree that work ethic and intelligence is something that can be passed down by parents. I don't agree that the correlation, especially in terms of work ethic, is as strong as you claim with success. Some people work really hard and get nowhere, and there are a lot of factors that come into play with that.
Can you see that a school zone with many $400,000+ homes would be more likely to contain parents that are engineers, doctors, upper management, lawyers, etc? And that their children might be more intelligent and have a stronger work ethic than children from a low income area?
I do not agree that their children are born smarter and more hard working, but I do agree that the conditions they live in make it more likely to develop a child that will become successful (reaching the potential of their intelligence and having opportunities to work towards).
Those neighborhoods also get far more money into the local schools. The parents likely have disposable income to invest in the development of their child and low financial stress. You would agree that these are factors in the development of a child?
And can you see how this would explain the correlation you identified between school performance and wealth in the district?...as opposed to the assertion that the level of funding to the school explains the correlation.
Funding doesn't always equal success. But a family with more money means a lot in the development of a child that can lead to success as an adult. And a lot of those differences have nothing to do with intelligence or work ethic. They could have more access to jobs via nepotism, they could have more arts/sports programs at their school, they could be sent to camps during the summer where they can continue to learn and take on leadership roles, they have parents who can spend more time focusing on how to develop their child because they are worried about just getting by, etc. Are we going to disregard those things and assume that successful people are always successful because they worked hard/smart and the fact that their children tend to be more successful is the result of good genes/parenting?
I am speaking in general terms here. Wealth doesn't fall from trees. In most cases it is earned through hard work and wise decision-making that indicates intelligence.
Social mobility is not as high in this country as we'd like to think. Poverty doesn't simply fall on people for being stupid and lazy either. Stupid and lazy people get by just fine in a lot of cases. And sometimes people that could succeed, or at least get by, in more fair conditions are stuck in poverty in large part because they were born in it without an opportunity to escape.
I gave a much likelier explanation for the correlation you brought up. But if you think wealth & success are a crapshoot, that some people just get lucky, and that 'work ethic' and 'intelligent life choices' are just racial code words in the political culture war, we won't agree on much.
Depends what you mean by crapshoot. Is it random? Hell no. Is it correlated strongly to the conditions you were born into? Absolutely. I wouldn't say that parentage isn't a factor, but I feel like you're singling out positive personality traits as the main factor when I feel like this ignores the big picture of what's different between the worlds of the rich and the impoverished.
As for code words, there is something to that. I know that's not what you feel or what you're trying to get across, but there are plenty of racists who believe the black community is in the situation its in as a result of not being smart or hard working. Hell, Q talks about it being a cultural problem on their end more than recognizing the systemic racism that brought us here. You've argued now that poor people are less likely to be intelligent and hard working. I doubt you'd say that's a factor in the racial disparity of this country.
